Paper Works

Leigh Martin repeats a simple process with wonderful variety a result. Richly pigmented ink is poured onto paper, run up, down and across just once, and then let dry. The alcohol based shellacs dry colour-fast and quick, but not before the visual history of their journey is traced. Like a fine emulsion, this travel over paper is redirected by air bubbles and dust, caught by surface tooth and slowed by progressive porousness.

Subtle variations in the grinding of different pigments (down to mere microns), along with a range of atmospherics on the day, create different degrees of viscosity. Sometimes the paper warps with the wet, and physically traps or pools the slow-moving ink. Dense puddles of colour then form. In other words, this simple business of pouring to build a surface is fraught with fluid misbehaviour. The results are lush and unpredictable. Each skin of colour becomes a variegated field rich with transgression. The works also feel almost back-lit, as light is reflected from the gessoed paper back through the translucent layers of tipped ink. They seem utterly luminous. Within the long tradition of monochrome painting in the West, Leigh Martin is making a significant contribution out of Aotearoa, New Zealand.